


Burning Out

by ysande



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 22:04:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9144037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ysande/pseuds/ysande
Summary: The night before Ezra is transferred to Team 7, he thinks about past, present and future. A bit of h/c and a bit of angst. (ATF verse, written in 2008).





	

There was no true silence in the city. Even here, thirty five stories above the frantic throng of humanity, there was no silence, no darkness, no peace. Three hundred and eighty feet above the ground, Ezra thought, and still not a goddamn hope of peace. The office whirred and clicked with the mechanical life of computers and machines. Tiny lights glowed with the malevolence of demonic red eyes, watching him from every side.

His own monitor was unnaturally bright, the words on the screen wavering as he tried to focus on them. He found himself mouthing the words to maintain his concentration, whispering them aloud like the lines of a forbidden litany. Perhaps that's what they were. He might not have argued if someone had suggested that they were a curse, these forms and files and briefs that had consumed nearly every waking hour of his life as Ezra Standish. To be honest, even that made up only a fraction of his life as a whole. Much more of it had been filled for weeks and months at a time with the life and personality of someone entirely new.

Ezra licked dry lips, reaching for the glass on his desk. He brought it to his mouth, but no more than a drop of water was pooled at the bottom. He sighed before he could stop himself. He wanted another glass of water, but the persistent dull ache that had settled into his muscles and his joints made getting up and walking to the kitchen seem like an insurmountable task. 

He heard the slow tread of footsteps long before they approached his desk. Sounds were magnified but oddly distorted, as though they came from very far away. Ezra didn't look up even when the solid presence stopped before him. He continued to type. The keys seemed ice-cold beneath his fingers.

The person shifted awkwardly as Ezra continued to ignore him. Finally, when it became clear that Ezra would not take the initiative to break the tension, the other man spoke first.

"Late night?"

Ezra raised a sardonic eyebrow. "Was that a question or a comment, Harris?"

"Statement of fact," answered Harris. He paused. "Why don't you go home? You look like shit."

"This _is_ home, Harris, and I know for a fact that I look better than you do." Lies on both fronts. He'd felt more at home in some of his cover IDs than he did in this building, and he was willing to be that he didn't look nearly as bad as he felt, which wasn't saying much. The low grade fever that had dogged him for the last few days had stopped being low grade the night before. He had taken a small handful of Motrin to no effect, heat swathing him like a heavy blanket. His skin felt as though it were blistering from the inside out. 

"I'm sorry things turned out this way," Harris said, sounding close to regretful. 

"I'm not," Ezra said harshly. He wasn't sure he could say the truth aloud to himself, let alone to someone else. A manilla folder of transfer papers, neatly and viciously signed by the branch head, had appeared on his desk two days before.

 _"I'd count myself lucky if I were you, Standish,"_ the agent who'd dropped it by had sneered. _"Sounds almost respectable. A transfer, not a dishonourable discharge. Not a fucking rifle rammed up your fucking ass, which what I would have suggested. Pah!"_

Ezra resisted the urge to massage his forehead, to try and dispel the ache that throbbed behind his eyes. He didn't know why Harris was here, in a deserted office close to midnight, making awkward small talk. Harris was a good agent. He was even a decent man, but he was also not a man who looked lightly at the prospect of career suicide by being too openly friendly with an agent marked as a traitor. Ezra didn't blame him. He would have done the same. There wasn't a man alive who would blindly follow another out of faith and friendship alone, against the recriminations and accusations of peers and superiors alike. There wasn't a man alive who deserved that kind of loyalty, whether the accusations were true or not.

"You're flying out in the morning, then?" Harris had an odd habit of phrasing statements as questions, particularly when he was uncomfortable. 

"First thing," Ezra said shortly. Once, he would have found some glimmer of sarcastic irony, for his pride and image if nothing else. His name had been dragged through mud and worse, though, his reputation torn to shreds. He had his pride and precious little else, and since those transfer papers had turned up, he wasn't even sure he had that anymore.

He thought he'd grown out of feeling hurt at being shunted from unwelcoming place to unwelcoming place. He was a grown man. He'd risen quickly through the ranks of his career - and fallen just as quickly, as it was - and he'd done things and been part of events that made even hard men look away. It was more than illogical that it was this final betrayal by his team that hurt the most, it was stupid and senseless and so fucked up it was a psychologist's wet dream.

"Well," said Harris uncomfortably. "Good luck, Standish." He reached out a hand, and after a moment, Ezra shook it. The best of the FBI, he thought cynically, reduced to a balding agent without the courage to even form a meaningful sentence. But there was no malice in Harris, and he alone of Ezra's teammates - former teammates, now - had paused to wish him, of all things, good luck. Harris's hand felt cold and clammy in his own, and, to Harris's credit, he didn't flinch from the burning heat in Ezra's. "Take care."

Ezra slumped lower in his seat when he heard the metallic chime of the elevator that signalled Harris's departure. His bags were packed and stowed neatly under his desk. The rest of his spartan belongings had been packed in boxes and shipped off to a hotel address in Colorado. Tomorrow, he'd get on the first flight to Denver and meet the man whose team he'd been newly assigned to. Tonight, though, he had to finish the process of handing over or closing all the files that had once been his, the files that had represented the last eight years of his life. He dealt with them dispassionately, too tired and too sick in body and spirit to care.

His fever climbed as he worked into the night, his skin burning in the cool fall air, in his own private version of hell.


End file.
